Pianist
Bruce Liu is the
Deutsche Grammophon's great young hope, and this is his debut album for the label. Really, it is his debut overall; an earlier album that gained a good deal of attention was a set of competition excerpts.
Liu gets all kinds of credit for avoiding the usual formulas for a debut album, and the program here would be interesting no matter where it appeared in a pianist's career. The idea of a unified French tradition running forward from
Rameau to the present day has been suggested often enough, and indeed, it is integral to various works by
Debussy. Yet nobody has tried to concretize the concept to the degree that
Liu does here. His program consists of
Rameau,
Alkan, and
Ravel, with the "
Waves" title referring both to a few programmatic pieces ("
Une barque sur l'ocean") and to a general dynamic.
Liu generates some striking transitions. The opening
Gavotte et six doubles of
Rameau ("doubles" are variations) play nicely off the variations of
Alkan's
12 Etudes in all the minor keys, Op. 39, No. 12, and the rather mysterious
Rameau-
Alkan segue after the
Gavotte et six doubles is compelling. The ornate yet interior quality of
Liu's reading of
Ravel's
Miroirs gives the program cohesion but results in a
Miroirs that, by itself, can't quite compete with other versions. Likewise, there are readings of the
Alkan Etude that make the piano ring more loudly. On balance, however, this is a recording that makes one want to hear more from the young pianist, and
Deutsche Grammophon favors him with fine Teldex Studio sound from Berlin. The album made classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023. ~ James Manheim
